Intracellular nanoparticles mass quantification by near-edge absorption soft X-ray nanotomography.

We used soft X-ray three-dimensional imaging to quantify the mass of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) within whole cells, by exploiting the iron oxide differential absorption contrast. Near-edge absorption soft X-ray nanotomography (NEASXT) combines whole-cell 3D structure determination at 50 nm resolution, with 3D elemental mapping and high throughput. We detected three-dimensional distribution of SPIONs within cells with 0.3 g/cm(3) sensitivity, sufficient for detecting the density corresponding to a single nanoparticle.